At The Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH), clinicians and researchers are tackling the biggest health problems facing children, from mental health, to obesity, autism and allergies. Thanks to the Good Friday Appeal and Run for the Kids, a new digital platform will help collect information for a large-scale population health study to provide the big picture on the current health challenges facing children.

Led by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) and Scientific Director Professor Melissa Wake, the ambitious Generation Victoria (GenV) research project will ask all Victorian families with babies born in 2021 – 2022 to be involved.

“GenV offers the possibility of a better future for us all. It aims to gather information from around 150,000 babies born over the next two years and their parents, and to follow them into the future. This will give us a research platform to better understand problems such as asthma, food allergies, obesity and mental illness, and give us the opportunity to better treat and prevent common and complex conditions,” said Melissa.

Health, development and wellbeing information from both parents and their newborns will be collected over a number of years via the Personize Digital Platform. Measuring characteristics on such a large scale will inform targeted research to change the future of children’s health.

“The Personize data platform is vital to GenV’s success. It solves research roadblocks of size, speed, cost and burden – not just for GenV, but for other studies too. Families can contribute their research data via ultra-short and engaging digital sessions. This means that everyone, no matter who or where they are, can take part easily from home,” said Melissa.

“GenV truly is a collaborative study and a partnership of many. We are profoundly grateful to supporters of Run for the Kids and the Good Friday Appeal for making the Personize data platform possible.”

GenV research team (2021). Back row L-R Sanji Kanagalingam, CEO, WeGuide; Prashant Chunduri, Solutions Architect, GenV; Susan Clifford, Personize Project Manager (Research), GenV; Warren Lee , Personize Project Manager (IT), GenV. Front row L-R Katie McBain, Personize Research Assistant, GenV; Professor Melissa Wake, Scientific Director, GenV; Poornima Helene Ravi, Personize Business Analyst, GenV.